Militant moderate, unwilling to concede any longer the terms of debate to the strident ideologues on the fringe. If you are a Democrat or a Republican, you're an ideologue. If you're a "moderate" who votes a nearly straight party-ticket, you're still an ideologue, but you at least have the decency to be ashamed of your ideology. ...and you're lying in the meantime.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Easy Come, Easy Go

Headline: US Withholds UN Funding Over Palestine VoteArticle Synopsis: UNESCO, the UN’s “cultural” commission, held a vote of its members to admit Palestine as a full member. Palestine was voted in by a landslide. US law prevents the US from funding any organization that confers statehood on Palestine before the US recognizes it, and will cease providing $80 million of UNESCO’s annual funding – around 20% of all contributions it receives. UNESCO may now hold a vote to rescind the membership of the US.

Don’t throw me into the briar patch: For two full generations, the UN has been increasingly a forum of ant-capitalist, anti-western, anti-American agitation. Every tin-pot tyrant gets elevated to international relevance by virtue of being the last man standing in whatever military coup that propelled him to the throne, and – because equivalence in political science is alive and well – the tin-pot tyrant has the same chance of being appointed to the UN commission overseeing, e.g., the Human Rights they obliterated during their rise to power.

...which explains Libya’s and Iran’s past membership on that committee.

The UN is the epitome of the kindergarten class run by 5 year-olds. The United States is continually accused of acting like a brash, know-it-all teenager by the aloofer heads of ancient European nations – and we are. Just like Europe is old and stodgy and set in their largely socialist ways. But the rest of the world? infants. Infants acting infantile, and who needs them?

Conclusion: So throw the US out of UNESCO, see if we care. If you don’t want our $80 million, we have more ways of spending it ourselves than we can shake a pointy Libyan stick at.

Headline: DOJ Sues SC Over ImmigrationArticle Synopsis: The feds sued South Carolina to stop the implementation of their anti-illegal immigration law. SC is the third state to be sued by the Justice Department over similar state laws, following Arizona and Alabama. The law would require state law enforcement to contact federal immigration officials for anyone suspected of being undocumented. SC claims that if the feds would enforce their own laws themselves the state wouldn’t have to fill in. The feds claim that these laws divert federal resources from other priorities.

‘Other’ priorities ... than enforcing their law?: Either it’s against federal law to enter this country illegally and the feds need to enforce it, or it’s not and the feds need to drop it altogether and let the states do what the states have the 10thAM authority to do.

If it’s against federal law and the feds refuse to enforce it, then the feds need to let the states handle it how they choose.

But this notion of spending millions of dollars to stop states from putting the feds into the awkward position of having to choose whether to enforce their own laws or not has gotta stop. Enforce your laws or don’t; if you don’t, then leave the states alone. We don’t have so much money that spending it to force states to stop enforcing their laws because the feds refuse to enforce their own is a wise investment.

Doing the math: The average cost to employers for covering a single employee’s health insurance is $12,000 per year; the Obamacare law assesses a fine of $2,000 for each employee the company voluntarily leaves uncovered. Each employer will save $10,000 per employee.

Employees at an entry-level or low-skill labor pay scale can get $11,000 of that $12,000 cost paid by the federal government under Obamacare, leaving the employee with $1,000 of his own to come up with. The Congressional Budget Office predicted that many employers would collude with their lower pay-scale employees to take a slightly greater salary in exchange for dropping health coverage.

And that doesn’t include the part-time employees who are not required to be covered. The math doesn’t add up and the feds, as always, didn’t show their work.

Conclusion: Who thought this was a good idea, again? How many more UN committees do we need to be thrown off of to pay for this?

Headline: Greek Referendum Deepens European Crisis

Article Synopsis: Within a week of the grownups in the Greek legislature biting the bullet and passing a law to stop spending money, thus allowing the rest of Europe to put up almost $150 billion to pay Greek bills, the Greek Prime Minister Papandreou – a socialist – has called for a referendum to determine whether Greece will actually abide by their own law and stop spending money, or whether they will continue to follow their previous profligacies. Stock markets immediately tanked. Analysts are expecting Greece to pull out of the deal, and for Europe to then expel Greece from their common market thus ensuring an ugly default. Italy and Spain are next on the horizon, and will be more likely to default as a result. France is asking China for money to help Greece.

The equal sharing of misery: Not content to leave bad enough alone, the idiot socialists in Greece would rather squat naked in the mud with pointy sticks than accept German money on the condition that they grow the hell up and establish fiscal priorities. Don’t those bossy Germans know that fiscal responsibility is contrary to everything that socialism stands for? Greece hasn’t had an elected socialist government for seventy years just to throw it away for a little thing like crushing debt.

Besides, fiscal conservatism is another name for free-market capitalism, and capitalism is notorious – as Churchill noted – for the “unequal sharing of blessings”. Greece, apparently, believes it is better to – as Winston also noted of socialism – equally share the misery.

Conclusion: Just like any heroin addict, Greeks can’t help themselves. Greeks won’t help themselves. There comes a point when the family gathers to say goodbye. Goodbye.